The Life of Oharu

Perhaps the most sublimely devastating of master director Kenji Mizoguchi’s celebrated collaborations with Tanaka, The Life of Oharu stars the actress as a once-proud concubine whose tragic fate is governed by the callous whims of men and the cruel jealousies of women as she slides into a life of prostitution in Edo-era Japan. Sensitive as always to the rigid social structures that subjugate his heroines, around whom the subtlest movement or camera angle is calibrated for maximum heartbreak effect, Mizoguchi offers a finely wrought, small-gesture melodrama to Tanaka, who in a single film inhabits a perfect synthesis of her most iconic roles—from noble lady, mother, and middle-class wife to geisha, prostitute, and pilgrim.